Archive of netnews
osu-dbs!mark
Cheers,
Mark Verber
Ohio State University
ecn-pb:rick
newsgroups as of September 18. The newsgroups I consider useful are:
net.general net.unix-wizards net.adm.site net.bugs
net.dcom net.eunice net.info-micro net.info-terms net.lan
net.lang.c net.mail net.micro net.news net.oa
net.periphs net.sources net.usenix net.usoft net.works
I did not archive the fa.* articles on the theory that they archived
somewhere on the arpanet. (If you dont like my choice of newsgroups,
put your disk space where your mouth is and start archiving that
group yourself). I am willing to entertain serious requests that I
start saving a newsgroup I omitted (dont even try net.jokes or
net.ham-radio), but your argument had better be a good one. I am
opreating on the (perhaps off base) theory that if I dont think it's
useful enough to read, it's certainly not worth saving.
I also have net.unix-wizards dating back to October 17,1981 and
net.bugs dating back to Oct 30,1981. (note that net.bugs includes
net.bugs.4bsd,etc)
The reason I am afraid to admit it and haven't until now, is that I do
not yet have a good method for retrieval. First, I am not going to do
it manually (for reasons that should be obvious). Second, I am afraid
of the potential phone costs caused by unreasonable queries to the as
yet unimplemented automatic server. (I shudder at the thought of
someone asking for the entire archive).
So, in summary, I am archiving them, but there is no way for anyone
else to retrieve them. I estimate that I can afford to keep about 1
year of news on line before I have to spool it to tape.
If anyone wants to implement a scheme for retrieval, I will be willing
to install it, but It must be workable. Eventually, I will write one myself
"when I have time".
I decided it would be better to start saving them without a
method of retrieval than to wait until I had a method
and small database.
Rick Adams